The Discover
Weekly Playlist
spotify's unrelenting ability to surpass the expectations of melomaniacs
I was the kid downloading viruses onto the family computer left and right. It was almost a weekly occurrence that an IT guy would come to our house to debug our massive machine of a computer. While most of my friends were still having to wait for dial-up, our house had broadband. I vividly remember my Dad asking me what the hell I was doing to the computer, I would shrug, play dumb, hoping this method would ensure my computer privileges weren’t taken away. For me, an early music junkie, Napster and then Limewire and Kazaa opened an entire universe, I no longer had to wait for the BMG CD Club catalog to come in the mail or hassle my Mom until she would take me to Harmony House to spend 18.99 for a CD, I now had it all at my fingertips and FOR FREE.
I made mixes like it was some type of job that I had to complete and excel at. It started with mixtapes, I was religious about the radio, I had to listen constantly, to find the next new hit before my friends did and more importantly to push down the record button to catch as many beginning seconds of a song as I could. I wanted my listeners to have an experience. Napster downloads elevated my system, I could more easily manage the track list, all of my mixes started with a recording of a baby saying ‘I love you’ and then off into the hands of listeners the CDs went.
Then on a magical day in March 2012 at SXSW the world was awash with Spotify, I was hopelessly obsessed with Grimes at the time (really still am), she played their stage and there begins my relationship with Spotify, I started an account that week. Spotify was like a rocket launch into the music stratosphere for me. Back then I would make a playlist on Spotify, then narrow it down to under 80 minutes (the length of a CD), buy those songs on iTunes, make exactly 20 copies of a mix and hand them out like little selective treasures. Still so much about making a great mix was about discovering the music, the jam that would slide into the next track, the slow build up, the half way point with songs that would make the listener go to another mental dimension, then the relaxed come down and then always a bonus track that didn’t match the rest of the mix at all.
With this everlasting and ongoing attachment to music you can only imagine my reaction the day Discover Weekly came out. You know the moments people talk about “everybody knows where they were when x, y, z” thats the level of reverence I have for Discover Weekly. I was standing at my desk, the morning, which is when I made all of my sales calls, was over and I was logging back into my computer to set up my pipeline for the following day. Like every other afternoon, I opened Spotify, music being my productivity guide and there it was…Discover Weekly.
Track after track dazzled me, I was floored and floating simultaneously, how did it do this? Pandora I got, it was genre based, that’s easy, like glorified radio. Spotify was on another level, it knew me and continues to know me, Discover Weekly routinely introduces me to music that become my favorite songs. Spotify is the platform that gave me my first personal algorithm, Spotify created a living organism that is so specific to me I can’t help but feel that it is for me, a gift to keep me present. Discover Weekly amplified my relationship with Spotify, I had always cared about Spotify but now Spotify cared for me back.
If there is a single brand out there that “gets it” for its target audience, it’s Spotify. The user experience is unparalleled, they take my data and they give me back so much more. Discover Weekly was a huge leap in solidifying the user : Spotify relationship and they didn’t stop there. In 2016 Spotify introduced The Year Wrapped with a 100 song playlist of each users most listened to songs of the year. This spread like wildfire, for a day all that anybody discussed were their top artists, songs, genres. In subsequent years Spotify has given me even more detailed information about my listening habits. Spotify gave me the name of “Pioneer” in 2020, meaning that I discover and listen to more new music than the average user. As a person who has prided themselves for a lifetime on discovering and sharing new music, this acknowledgment and ego stroke marries me even more to the platform.
Another Spotify highlight is the ability to make collaborative playlists. I have written many love stories with people utilizing the collaborative playlist as our medium. Currently, my sister and I are writing the greatest love story to date as we add songs to a collaborative playlist that we will one day give to my niece, her daughter. Music is a language and Spotify understands and facilitates the sharing of this art as a communicative tool.
Simply put, Spotify is paradise. Over the years they’ve managed to delight the user again and again while keeping the basic mission of access to music the same. In quite a few ways my life would be easier if I switched to Apple Music, but the passing thought is a joke, Spotify has my heart forever. If for some reason I forget how much Spotify means to me, all I have to do is scroll through my playlists and I know I will smile at all of the memories made, listening to music, dancing to songs, singing at the top of my lungs, feeling free, knowing that it’s all because of Spotify.